


Puzzled

by blacktail_chorus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Competition, Domesticity, Fluff, Friendship, Games, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:38:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4525833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacktail_chorus/pseuds/blacktail_chorus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"That's not helping," Sherlock groused.</i>
</p>
<p><i>"Not helping </i>you<i>, maybe," was John's rejoinder. "But you're not even working on this part."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Puzzled

Tall, bulbous head; skinny neck. Straight shoulders, or nearly so--the left angled a bit higher than the right. Not distinct enough; no good. He'd need to start with more obvious blanks until the pattern began to reveal itself. Now this one, here: much more promising. The fat, lopsided head and squat neck would stand out. Even better, there would be a dash of dark on top of the lighter taupe body. In fact, he might have sorted that one into the group over--

"There," John interrupted Sherlock's search with a satisfied statement. He plunked down one brightly coloured cardboard puzzle piece and latched it surely with its neighbor. Sherlock hadn't even heard him come home.

"I knew you liked puzzles," John continued. "But I didn't realize you meant that literally. Aha--" Here he deftly picked another loose piece from the table and slid it home with a satisfying _snick_.

It was that piece--the earlier piece, the one he'd dismissed as too generic to find at so early a stage. Sherlock frowned, his eyes roving across the table. "Explain," he demanded, not looking up.

"Explain what?"

"That piece. How did you choose it?"

"Dunno... it caught my eye?" John offered. Sherlock huffed in response. "Well, there's not much of that colour on the table, and the neck is so skinny I guess it just stood out. And the blank was already snapped in, right there. So."

A fluke, then, Sherlock concluded. Random chance he'd happened to alight on that connection.

"That's three for me, then," John went on, as he popped another piece into place.

"I wasn't aware it was a competition," Sherlock answered stuffily. Still, he redoubled his search for the lopsided taupe piece with the dark bit on top. There! Easily found, indeed, and now slotted into position, just so.

Sherlock heard the scrape of metal on carpet and linoleum as John pulled out the chair across the kitchen table. It creaked once as he settled into it, then again as John scooted it closer in.

"What's the picture supposed to be?" John asked conversationally as he tried another piece, grimacing a bit when it didn't quite fit.

"Don't know." Sherlock acquired a new target: he was now looking for a tawny yellow bit with a red stripe through it, longways. The shape was unremarkable.

"How do you not know? You saw the box, didn't you?"

"Nope," Sherlock replied. "I get a stack of them at a charity shop. The man behind the counter swaps the pieces in each box, and when I get them home I select a box at random. I suppose I could narrow it down if I looked at all the lids, but that would rather defeat the purpose."

"Which is?" _Snick_. John got another one.

"Obvious. Practicing pattern recognition. Literally fitting pieces together--I must never make a move unless I know it will be correct."

"You're saying you do this piece by piece?" Now Sherlock looked up at John, the word _idiot_ clearly stated with only his eyes. "I mean, not in the usual way. You look for each specific piece, one at a time?"

"Well how else would I do it?" He looked down again. Consternation: the yellow-slash-red piece was not materializing. Could it be missing? Would John stop being so distracting so he could figure it out?

"Well, when I look, I'm looking at the details, of course, but I'm also just looking, you know?" _Sna_ \--oh, apparently not quite. Sherlock could see that the shapes on John's selected pieces appeared to fit, but the pattern didn't quite match up. John recognized this, too, and pulled them apart again. "Damn. Anyway, I just look, and take things in, and then some part of my brain will pop up and say, hey, over there, and then I'll try it. Usually works pretty well."

"Fascinating," Sherlock drawled. "Your strategy is commendable... for a nine-year old."

_Snap_. "That's five," John said with a hint of a grin. "To your one."

Sherlock resisted the urge to look up and glare. The only worthy response would be to refocus on the task at hand. The yellow-red piece was indeed missing, he was sure of it. Annoying to have lost so much time to a ghost.

Silence fell, broken only by the rustles and creaks that accompanied John shifting his weight, or one or the other of them picking up a piece and fitting it into place. Sherlock had the distinct impression that John was _smiling_ , although he wouldn't lose valuable searching time to look up and make sure. He thought he might even be hearing him make a faint humming noise.

John flit about, here and there, now working on a little lonely raft of pieces, now growing the puzzle in from its edges. He was clearly benefiting from Sherlock's earlier organization of the loose pieces based on pattern, shape, and colour. That made it all the more annoying when he began to disrupt that organization, herding groups of pieces away from their neat rows into chaotic jumbles with no rhyme or reason at all.

"That's not helping," Sherlock groused.

"Not helping _you_ , maybe," was John's rejoinder. "But you're not even working on this part."

That was certainly true. While Sherlock wasn't going exactly in order, he was building up methodically from the bottom to the top. After the stumbling block with the missing piece, he'd picked up steam, and his completed area was roughly equivalent to John's (if taken as a whole). He sighed internally and pressed on.

The clock ticked softly in the background. Sherlock was beginning to feel stiff, and his concentration was broken by fleeting thoughts about tea. Still, John's head was bent to the work, and Sherlock could hardly break off first. He rolled his shoulders and peered down, trying to find a golden yellow bit with strangely rippled shoulder parts. He located it at last at the edge of John's disgraceful cluster of loose pieces.

"There," Sherlock said softly, under his breath.

John looked up at him--he could feel his eyes on the top of his head--and then down at the area Sherlock was working on. "Oh," he said.

Then he began shifting pieces about. Loose pieces were swept off to the side, further disrupting Sherlock's neat system. "John!"

John didn't respond. Instead, he was looking at his floating raft of interlocked pieces. It was rather large, now, mostly covered by shades of dark blue (water, perhaps a river, judging by the shape) with a fringe of yellow like an autumn hayfield all along one side. John began to rotate the raft. And there on the end, Sherlock could see, was a tawny yellow piece with a red slash going right through, longways.

"John," he repeated, matter-of-fact now.

"Yes, I see it," John replied. He finished rotating the chunk and slid it down towards the empty spot left on the bottom left side of the puzzle. Sherlock could see now that it would attach to his own work in more than once place. He lifted his hands to help guide it home, then hesitated.

John looked up and paused, fingertips atop the lonely raft. "A little help?" he asked.

Sherlock reached out with one hand, and the two of them molded the pieces into place together. After a final, satisfying _snick_ , Sherlock ran his fingers across the newly-made connection.

He looked up. John was smiling at him, mostly with his eyes. "I'll put the kettle on," John stated, pushing himself up from his chair. Sherlock stretched his arms behind his back, then turned to go fetch their mugs. The corners of his mouth turned up into a grin.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to anyone who has felt the deep satisfaction of making a big connection while doing a jigsaw puzzle. :)


End file.
